By Bradley Burston
Jerusalem - Don't let the broken-in black hat fool you: Yudel Bleiweiss became an outlaw only this year.
In fact, Bleiweiss, at 34 a lifelong pious Jew, was almost obsessively law-abiding until January, when a rabbinical court issued a scathingly worded ban on use of the Internet.
He's not proud of it, but Bleiweiss surfs the Net.
Early this year, a panel of Israeli rabbis rocked the Web-savvy devout by ruling: "It is severely forbidden to connect to the Internet ... which constitutes a horrible danger."
The prestigious ultra-Orthodox court said that even "the possibility of connecting to this must be annulled".
Overnight, Bleiweiss and other observant Web fanciers found themselves in the unfamiliar position of being in danger of contravening Jewish law just by their daily act of logging on.
Much as he loves the surfing life, Bleiweiss, having tired of weeks of furtive browsing in a Jerusalem public library, has now decided to go straight.
"I have resolved to stop, with the Lord's help," Bleiweiss said, buying a sleek, wide-eyed carp for the Sabbath in a market near Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim quarter.
"I succeeded in quitting smoking two years ago and giving up the Internet can't possibly be harder than that. I hope."
On the other side of the holy city, in a squat stone building that is equal parts talmudic (religious) academy and mad scientist's lab, a team of holy men and hi-tech tinkerers have exhausted themselves trying to make the Internet safe for sacred surfing.
The Institute of Science and Halacha, or Jewish law, has ruled on such cutting-edge questions as human cloning and how to pray on the moon. It has found sophisticated electronic solutions to make even submarines Sabbath-compliant.
But a search for a foolproof "filter" to screen out Web sites deemed objectionable to religious Jews, has come up dry.
Institute head Rabbi Levy Yitzkak Halperin said software developers had yet to perfect a filter sensitive enough to shield child surfers from what he viewed as dangerous doses of the profane.
"We have seen what we are liable to get to by surfing the Web," Halperin said. "To my great regret and heartache, the world is truly licentious today. There are no limits. Anything goes."
Early on, religious Jews were swift to recognise the educational potential of the World Wide Web, setting up a plethora of sites with features such as Ask The Rabbi. A recent query: "According to Jewish law, is day-trading Kosher?"
Voluminous sites cater to the needs of the religious, granting one-stop access to liturgy, matchmaking, recipes and a live, round-the-clock view of the Kotel, the remnant of the ancient Jewish Temple also known as the Western or Wailing Wall.
Jews accessing the Kotel site can even send an email to God - their message is placed in a crevice in the wall.
Concurrently, a range of software programmes has been designed specifically to keep the off-colour off limits.
Halperin, however, said that none had yet proved powerful enough to stand up to the infinite variety of Web abominations.
An explosion of salacious sites, some of which appear spontaneously as "pop-ups" unbidden by users, have convinced many influential rabbis that the potential dangers of the Internet far outweigh its capacity for good.
Rabbi and former politician Menachem Porush linked the ban to longstanding rabbinical proscriptions against television.
Porush said the many observant Jews in hi-tech careers could continue to use the Web for professional purposes.
The ban was designed largely to protect children, he said.
"We are not against the principle of the Internet, but ... we control, very much, what we give our children to study, to learn, to read, to listen ... we see this as a great danger."
Ban or no ban, many of the pious surf on, undeterred.
An underground of sorts has arisen among Jerusalem's Internet devout, suggesting that a wedge of technology has chipped in to the rabbinical establishment's once-ironclad authority.
The Web rebels are usually young, many of them United States-born and bred, products of an age in which globalisation's e-tentacles have reached even in to the insular neighbourhoods of the pious.
"People should be able to make their own choice," said Chaim Lesser, a student at a yeshiva, or religious academy.
Like many yeshiva students, 18-year-old Lesser is a devotee of the Netcafe, a terminal-laden coffee house in downtown Jerusalem's Russian Compound, itself a pocket of rare bohemia just a stone's throw from staid houses of worship and a jail.
"Around here, we're all teenagers, no one's going to say that (the ban) is smart or it's good," Lesser said. "But my sister's decided - no more, she's not going to (surf) anymore."
Arnie Sleutelberg, a visiting Detroit-area rabbi, took strong issue with the prohibition.
"The Internet is an incredible tool and has the potential to reveal great things, including making religious materials ... available to many," Sleutelberg said.
"Of course, like just about anything in our world, it can be used and abused, so we have to careful that it doesn't become a tool for negative things, or to bring darkness in to the world. It has the potential to bring a lot of light." - Reuters